Match Mates is an Australian children's television game show that was broadcast afternoon on Nine Network Australia between 1981 and 1982.
[2] Alongside the Grundy Organisation, Penny Spence, who served as Nine Network's vice president of Children's Programmes, produced the show.
If the pictures "matched", the corresponding rebus pieces were revealed and the child was then given the opportunity to solve the puzzle.
One number, represented by a drawing of a butterfly net, contains a verbal clue that is read by the announcer and is associated with one of the items on the puzzle board.
The children were shown a succession of increasingly larger clues to the identity of a person, place, thing, etc.
Numbers eleven through twenty on the bottom contained scrambled words related to the pictures.
If the pieces "matched", the corresponding "super word" letter or space was revealed and the child was then given the opportunity to solve the puzzle.
The first child to solve the puzzle won the round, the game, and a $50(AUS) savings account.
The Sydney Morning Herald called Match Mates "fun", writing that it "prove[s] that children's TV can be light, merry and educational into the bargain".